The burden, and I should say the responsibility of writing about a real historical figure, is formidable. Do you depict that person warts and all? How indeed do you reveal those warts without violating your character, but rather make the flaws an interesting part of their personality? This is a challenge I had to meet head on when I set out to write my Georgia O’Keeffe mysteries. I knew about her as a painter as the rest of the world does. But what in her character or her work as a painter would even suggest she might make a good amateur sleuth?

Actually, my research began with an art exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts that focused not on her paintings but her “things”—her clothing mostly. She was an expert seamstress and sewed many of her own clothes. I fell in love with one cream colored dress that had miniscule pleats that made up the bodice. I put that dress in the first book I wrote featuring Georgia, Light On Bone. One thinks of O’Keeffe’s paintings as great swathes of color, broad brush strokes but the stitching on this dress is just the opposite of broad brushstrokes. It is painstakingly delicate. The detailing is exquisite, the stitches almost microscopic. In short, she was alert to the infinitesimal that others might miss. For her, the Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass would be redundant.

In addition to the clothes she made, she had a fairly large collection of Japanese kimonos. These kimonos in a sense spoke largely about her aesthetic which was sleek and simple. But there were also, jeans, sneakers, and a well-worn pair of brown leather lace up boots that she used for tromping around in the desert.

Issey Miyake, the famous Japanese clothing designer, in 1983 declared the painter his muse. “Georgia O’Keeffe. For the first time, I’m designing clothes with one person in mind. And I’m planning to send them to her when they’re ready.”

But perhaps the greatest example of her refined sensibilities is her house in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Her dining table was a plywood plank on sawhorses. On a small table by an easy chair there was a dish of rattles she collected from rattlesnakes she had encountered on her walks out in the desert, and killed if they threatened her. There were also, the bones that she searched for that became a central subject of so many of her paintings. In short, no clutter, no tchotchkes, nothing distracting. She could keep her focus on form, pattern and construction. How things fit together.

As I have said countless times to people, when you come back from seeing the Abiquiu house, you simply want to throw out everything in your own house. But then you realize it wouldn’t work, for it is the New Mexico light that brings it all together. She decorated the house in an active partnership with the desert light.

But these are all the material things that spoke so directly to her aesthetic. What about her thinking? Her beliefs beyond the material? How did she think and handle her complex relationship with her husband Alfred Stieglitz who was serially unfaithful to her? Perhaps the one act she never forgave was when he forced her to have an abortion.

Although I never found anything in her writing that directly mentioned the abortion, I did find this letter to Stieglitz after one of her early trips to the southwest.

There is much life in me — when it was always checked in moving toward you — I realized it would die if it could not move toward something … I chose coming away because here at least I feel good — and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside — and very still — Maybe you will not love me for it — but for me it seems to be the best thing I can do for you — I hope this letter carries no hurt to you — It is the last thing I want to do in the world.

So, it was by reading her letters to Stieglitz and those she wrote to Anita Pollitzer, another artist and friend, who introduced her to Stieglitz that I discovered her voice, and some of her deepest passions. It is a quiet yet dazzling voice. It is a voice that I felt was the essence of Georgia O’Keeffe.

I have written many novels that feature historical figures. Although these are fictional stories, I always want to stay true to the character of that person. I think of myself as an explorer of feelings, buried emotions and not simply events in their lives, but how these events might impact their lives and how they would think about them. And this is what fed into Georgia’s eccentric skills as an amateur detective. There is an array of feelings and emotions to be explored in the life of O’Keeffe. Perhaps first and foremost those feelings for the desert and her regrets of never having a child. But there are also her political beliefs and the growing threat of the second world war.

Perhaps the best part of writing about an historical figure is for me the ‘historical’ part. My book Light on Bone, and the second one, Mortal Radiance, are both set in the 1930s. The build up toward World War 2 is beginning. Therefore, I find myself having to take meticulous care on a range on seemingly obscure questions as I explore that era and put facts in the book. What year were the ice cream treats Eskimo pies invented? Did they have electro cardiograms in the 1930’s? When was penicillin developed? The OSS morphed into the CIA in the 1940s. How did that happen? When and where in our country did the German American Bund emerge. What were the ties between the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor and Nazis?

But perhaps one of the most fascinating things I had to explore was a perceptual phenomenon that Georgia O’Keeffe had known as Synesthesia. Synesthesia is a perceptual experience in which stimulation in one sensory pathway triggers another experience in a second pathway. This is a perfect talent for a visionary detective to possess. And it’s not fiction! Georgia was a great listener to classical music. So, I might think when I see one of her paintings what music might she have been listening to that inspired the painting of The Grey Hills—was it Pablo Casals? Or perhaps something more tumultuous, Mahler Symphony number 9? For me Georgia O’Keeffe is an ultimate and compelling enigma and that was why I chose to write about her. And in doing so I am determined to remain faithful to the fiction of this character—Georgia Totto O’Keeffe.

***

The Supreme Court‘s ruling this week that presidents have some immunity from criminal prosecution came in response to arguments Donald Trump made about his case in Washington, D.C., but the decision could also dramatically affect the former president’s case in Georgia.

The high court ruled that a lower court judge will have to sift through Trump’s federal election interference indictment to determine which acts are official and private. Judge Tanya Chutkan will then have to decide which of Trump’s official acts are absolutely immune from prosecution and which are only presumptively immune. A judge in Georgia may eventually have to do the same.

It is unclear how this tedious process, which legal experts say could evolve into a mini-trial of its own over the next few months, will affect Trump’s four charges in Washington, but the Supreme Court provided guidelines that suggest special counsel Jack Smith’s case will be significantly weaker once immunized acts are excised from it.

Of Trump’s four criminal cases, the one in Georgia is the most similar to the one in Washington. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis alleged Trump and 18 co-defendants violated the state’s racketeering laws by attempting to overturn the 2020 election illegally in a battleground state that Trump narrowly lost.

Willis’s sweeping indictment featured dozens of acts that, when looked at as a whole, result in an alleged violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The acts included Trump having phone calls or meetings with state lawmakers, posting false statements on his X account about the election while he was still president, and communicating with officials in his Department of Justice.

The Supreme Court outlined in its guidance that a president’s communication with the DOJ is a core function of the office and must always be immune from prosecution. Other acts, such as a president’s communication with state officials or his public statements, could be immune from prosecution, but a lower court judge must decide that under the Supreme Court’s new framework.

As with Smith’s charges, the Supreme Court’s ruling threatens to imperil Willis’s indictment depending on what the judge in Georgia determines are official acts.

Unlike in Washington, where prosecutors and Chutkan can quickly forge ahead to address immunity in the case, the Georgia case has another layer of problems.

Judge Scott McAfee, the Fulton County Superior Court judge presiding over Trump’s case, ruled earlier this year that Willis was not disqualified from the case after Trump and his co-defendants argued a relationship she had with a prosecutor created an irreversible conflict of interest.

Trump appealed McAfee’s decision, and now the Georgia Court of Appeals has taken the judge’s decision under review.

Trump also requested several months ago that his case in Georgia be dismissed because of presidential immunity, and McAfee said he would wait until the Supreme Court issued its decision before he addressed Trump’s request.

Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, a Georgia-based lawyer who specializes in elections, noted that the Georgia appellate court likely will not address Trump’s appeal about disqualification until the first quarter of 2025, meaning McAfee currently does not have jurisdiction over the case to make decisions about immunity.

“It is very unlikely that the trial court will even have jurisdiction to rule on this motion or to have its own mini-trial prior to the election,” Lawrence-Hardy said Monday on a call with reporters.

She observed, however, that Trump’s immunity argument to the Supreme Court “very closely tracks the briefing in this case,” suggesting the case will undergo the same mini-trial exercise as the one that is anticipated in Washington.

It is also unclear how the Supreme Court’s ruling will affect Trump’s co-defendants. It could have zero impact on some, but others, such as former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and former chief of staff Mark Meadows, may see some relief because their actions involving Trump could be protected by presidential immunity now.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor, said in a post on X that it is unlikely that Clark would be able to face charges in the same case as Trump because evidence against Clark that involves Trump is now protected by immunity and cannot be included in Trump’s case.

Kreis said the court’s decision complicates trying Meadows but does not rule it out.

“As a consequence, it’s rather unlikely that Jeff Clark will ever be tried alongside Donald Trump at the same time,” Kreis wrote. “The Meadows issue will be considerably more complex.”

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The cases in Washington and in Georgia appear poised to stretch for several months or longer, but if Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, were to win the election, he could attempt to use his pardon power to toss his federal case out.

While the Georgia case is stalled indefinitely and may be drastically diminished once immunity questions are sorted out, Trump would be unable to pardon himself there.

Just a couple of weeks after the Kentucky Wildcats’ miraculous baseball season ended in their first-ever College World Series berth, assistant coach Nick Ammirati is leaving to join the Georgia Bulldogs, the school announced Tuesday.

Ammirati came to Lexington in 2021 after leaving Southern Mississippi, and his contract expired last night at midnight. Instead of a renegotiation, he leaves for Georgia to join former Wildcat coach Will Coggin, who was an assistant under Nick Mingione from 2020-2023.

Ammirati’s departure will sting a tad bit for Kentucky, as he was the lead recruiter for tons of players, both incoming freshmen and guys coming in through the transfer portal. The program is in a much better spot now than when Ammirati first got here, so finding a replacement shouldn’t be as challenging as one would initially think.

Mingione moved Ammirati to the dugout more than two years ago, when Ammirati originally coached third base, to be with the players in the dugout, leaving Coach Mingione to coach third base. Mingione made the switch and he credits that move being a pivotal point in turning the program around.

We could be seeing our first repercussion of this loss, as standout outfielder Nolan McCarthy has entered the transfer portal, according to Derek Terry.

This past season McCarthy was Kentucky’s full-time starting centerfielder while batting .288 with eight home runs and 41 RBI. He was set to be a redshirt senior for the 2025 season.

McCarthy will forever live in Kentucky history after his memorable play vs. Oregon State that sent the Bat Cats to the College World Series. In Game 2 of the Lexington Super Regional against the Beavers, McCarthy scored from second base on a dropped third strike to give the Cats a 3-2 lead, which would prove to be the final score.

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